


"go back to sleep."

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [41]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Best Friends, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Secrets, can be read as platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21795514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Alexander frets about the Orient Express. George is sort of helpful.Canon EraWritten for the forty-first prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/George Mukherjee
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [41]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	"go back to sleep."

For some reason, I cannot sleep.

It is the end of the Easter holidays and I am back in England, laying under the crisp white sheets of the bed in the Mukherjee’s spare room, staring up at the ceiling and feeling my gluey hot hands clenching against the quilt.

Every time I close my eyes, I see my grandmother, I see her necklace, I see the visions I had when I realised that she could have done it. I cannot help it even though it is all over, which is what makes it ridiculous. The Mukherjees are warm people with a home that I can feel safe in, but today it feels like I am dying, suffocating among bright decorations and beautifully billowing clothes. Mandalas tried to sit down with me for a game of chess when I arrived, but I ended up going upstairs to unpack. Harold, who is bright and excited for his life in Cambridge, wanted to help me unpack. Sensing my distress, he said to me that he would get George to talk to me. My best friend, finally arriving back from ‘speaking to an old school friend’ (detecting), rocketed straight up the stairs and tackled me into a hug that knocked me onto the bed.

“Alex!” he yelled, ruffling my hair and squeezing me tight. “Hastings! How was the trip?”

I shrugged. “Alright.”

He looked at me as if I had gone mad. “Alex?”

“I’ll talk about it later.”

With a strange look cast at me, George reached for one of the shirts I was unpacking. “Where do you want this, Al?”

* * *

Now it is the early hours of tomorrow morning — or rather, today, I suppose — and I cannot close my eyes for seeing visions of what could have been, if my grandmother had done it. It feels as if the air is closing around me, forcing down my throat and filling my lungs yet leaving me unable to breathe. Although the air is cool, the heat of my body that is wrought from stress fills the room and makes my world unbearably hot. Perhaps it is just the panic that is setting in, clawing at my skin — or is that my own nails that are dragging across my forearms and drawing blood? — and breathing down my neck as if the worst sort of person is after me.

What if it has been her?

Something cool touches my jaw and I gasp.

“Alex, are you there?”

“George.” I gasp out his name, feeling something relax in my chest as the heat retreats from the touch of his fingers and outwards. My body, however, still burns.

“Alex, you need to breathe.” He slips his cool hands under the collar of the nightshirt and for some reason, the contact calms me. “What’s wrong?”

“There was a murder in the holidays.”

Saying it aloud makes my chest hurt, the pressure of the realisation that it could have been my grandmother coming back in the way it had the moment it occurred to me.

“On the Orient Express?” George’s eyes are lit by the lamp that he turned on at my bedside, and I can see the detective fire that lights them up. “How ironic, my friend.”

The instant that he says that, the Orient Express begins to feel incredibly far away, like the book it is so similar to. It becomes a story wrapped up in my casebook, one that I have been meaning to share with my very best friend. “My grandmother was a suspect.”

“Did you solve it?” he asks, sitting at my side and covering my hand with his own.

We are awkward because we are both boys. We’ve never been taught or been able to be feeling and kind and comforting, only how to be joking and loud and… rather un-English.

“I had help. Or rather… the help had me.”

He raises an eyebrow in question. “Go on?”

“There were two girls on the train,” I tell him, closing my eyes and tipping back my head against the wall. “Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong.”

“Daisy Wells?” He squeezes my hand.

“Yes.” I frown, and I can feel him looking at me. “Why?”

“She was part of the Fallingford scandal earlier this year.” He places the cool fingers of his free hand on my exposed hip and I stifle a shriek. With a snort of laughter, he says, “Good, paying attention. Yes, the Fallingford scandal. An antique collector charmed the lady of the family and was in turn murdered by the best friend of the eldest son, his name being something-or-other Bampton. He pulled the same sort of stunt of charming the mother and then stealing all their things on the Bampton family, and it was revenge for that. Bampton didn’t get hung because he’s Harold’s age but he certainly went away for life.”

“That’s awful!”

“That’s life. And why we want to catch murderers. Anyway, do continue.”

“They found the murderer, I won’t deny that. But I helped. The police let me help them so I helped the girls, letting them sneak in and listen in, telling them what I knew. I caught someone quite different: a spy. I wanted to let the girls know that I had but I couldn’t, so I just told them to read the papers that I had found, the ones with the secret code.” I’m babbling now, nonsensical from tiredness and high off euphoria and dizzy with relief.

George lays down on the bed, pushing aside the quilt. “It sounds wonderful. I only wish that I could have been there to see it.”

“I’ll show you my casebook tomorrow.”

“You kept one?”

“Of course.”

He grins, and I know he’s grinning even though I cannot see it. “You’ve learnt. Now, lay down.”

“Why?”

“It’s three in the morning,  _ go back to sleep _ !” he says, tugging at my shoulder.

“Will you stay?”

“Will you let me?”

“Of course I will.”

I lay down beside him, and I bow my head into his shoulder, curling against him as he wraps one arm over me.

This feels normal, even though it is not.

This feels right, even though it would get us caned at Weston.

“George?”

“Shut up, Hastings. I feel it too.”


End file.
